Call of Duty ELITE will be completely free for Black Ops 2, more timed exclusives for Xbox 360

"We’ve learned a lot in our first year of Call of Duty Elite," says Activision

Call of Duty ELITE made Activision a lot of money, but seeing as how competing services like Battlelog, Halo Waypoint, and so on tend to be free, seems ELITE is ready to make the jump too. Activision announced today that for Black Ops II, all ELITE services will be free.

The first four Map Packs will, to no one's surprise, be timed exclusives on Xbox 360, bringing "a variety" of multiplayer and Zombies content. Now you can get all these separately or pick up the Season Pass for 4000 Microsoft Points ($49.99 USD), which is basically like pre-paying for a small discount.

Activision did mention that the Season Pass and DLC Map Packs "may not be available on all gaming platforms." Since we can't imagine they'd ditch the PC or PS3, we're going to guess the publisher is referring to the upcoming Wii U version.

Black Ops II will be out on November 13. More details regarding the 2013 DLC will likely come after that.

re: Call of Duty ELITE will be completely free for Black Ops 2, more timed exclusives for Xbox 360

Millions of people were willing to pay for COD ELITE, but making the service free was a smart move, IMO. Lots more competition out there now (even Resident Evil has RE.net all of a sudden), and in the end, the paid version of ELITE didn't really offer that much extra over the free version.

re: Call of Duty ELITE will be completely free for Black Ops 2, more timed exclusives for Xbox 360

Best way for them to go, I always wondered why they were charging for a service that was being done by companies like Bungie(for free) for years. Splitting up that and seasons passes is probably the best route possible.